Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Big Henry Takes Offence

To start, this is sadly the last school-related post for the next few months. But it is also with joy that I post - I was recently given a shout-out on the blog of one of my all-time comics heroes, Warren Ellis, for one of my other final projects. (If you've never read Transmetropolitan - or even Freak Angels, the awesome project he's serializing on his site, I'd highly recommend it...)

For our final project in our figure illustration class, we were given six weeks to design a 16x32 inch horizontal illustration that highlighted the figure. For myself, I'd just seen the movie Winter's Bone (again, go out and watch it - it's the best movie I've seen in two years at least), so I wanted to do something that touched on that gritty, rural american aesthetic.

After much drawing and compositional planning, this was one of my comps from about early/mid-project.

After finally nailing down the specifics of the composition and all that, I did a few media tests (like this one here). Once I was satisfied with those, I dived right in...

...starting...

...and finishing the linework...

...and the tones in inkwash...

...finally finishing the image off with some nice light watercolor washes for color and a bit of acrylic for the highlights. Ideally I'll be able to scan this on someone's giant oversize scanner and play with it a bit more in photoshop, but for now, this cruddy little photos is this piece's only digital presence.

And I'm okay with that.

ALSO!In the hubbub of finishing the school year, I forgot to hype a short comic I drew earlier in April! Written by Michael May and drawn by myself, it's for "Panels For Primates" over at Act-I-Vate, an awesome charity being run to help out a Primate Rescue Center.Read our comic RIGHT HERE.